Large Language Models

I don't imagine AI will kill us, It'll probably just turn us all into morons

I should begin this post by flatly declaring that nothing here is written by, or with the assistance of AI. If you read something here that you think is really great, well, that’s all me baby! And if you read some real crap here, some illogical garbage filled with typos, well, that’s me too.

I can’t promise that my writing will be great, but I can and do promise that it will be just that, my writing. Not some slop spit out of a machine.

Photo by Akin Cakiner on Unsplash

Writing serves more than a single purpose. One of its multiple purposes is as an aid to thinking. When we engage in the act of writing, that act forces us to think, to clarify our arguments, to check our conclusions.

Perhaps David McCullough said it best:

“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”

If we allow AI to do our writing for us, well, then we aren’t thinking and the unexercised mind goes soft and degrades just the same as an unexercised body does.

Those of us who drove cars for decades before Apple brought forth the IPhone can clearly see how this played out in our own lives. Before GPS was in the palm of our hands we could drive long distances and find unfamiliar places that we may have only seen a time or two before. Now, with that GPS, we can easily find our way anywhere, but not without it. We’ve lost a navigational skill that used to simply come naturally to everyone.

That loss didn’t harm us. Finding places is certainly easier with GPS than without it, but we must acknowledge that a seemingly natural skill has been lost.

Giving in to the impulse to write with AI, instead of struggling with our words is however much more serious, for it threatens our actual ability to think, and without that ability we shed what separates us from the animals. We lose what makes us human.

Another purpose of writing is human connection. Human connection unlimited by time and space. I have read, and understood, the personal thoughts of a Roman Emperor who ruled at the very height of the Empire. A man separated from me by half our earth and almost two thousand years. Yet I can read his words and come to understand something about his inner self.

How amazingly powerful is that? Is there anything created by humanity, over the course of history more powerful?

When I was eleven years old a fellow published a novel that is, I think, largely forgotten today. Long after it was published, I saw a copy in a used bookstore and brought it home. That novel completely changed my entire outlook and perspective on a major portion of my life. His words changed me in a really fundamental way. But, I’ve never met him, heck, I don’t even really know the first thing about him.

I’ve cried while reading, I’ve felt ecstatic joy while reading, and I’ve certainly hoped that some books would never end.

These things are connection, human connection between a writer and a reader, completely unbound by time and space.

AI can’t create human connection. It may be able to string words together in a correct and pleasing way, but it can not fulfil this fundamental goal of writing. It can not create a connection between reader and writer. For it is nothing but a computer, a tool, a mass of wires and switches.

With each passing day I seem to encounter more and more AI writing. AI writing that isn’t disclosed as such. Most who publish it seem eager to pass it off as their own work. But, I read a lot, and as such it becomes easier and easier to recognize, for while the topics might radically change, the AI writing is largely all the same. The same in cadence and form, the same lack of discernible voice.

That’s it really. AI doesn’t have, and can’t have its own unique author’s voice.

OK, I can’t resist. I’ll quote AI here. Specifically Google’s Gemini:

“An author's voice is the unique, signature style of a writer, encompassing their personality, attitude, and worldview expressed through word choice, tone, and sentence structure. It is the distinct "sound" of the writing, often reflecting the author's personal beliefs and emotions, which helps create an honest, engaging connection with readers.”

That’s author’s voice, and not even the most ardent fans of AI can ever argue that technology will ever deliver it.

Indeed writers attend universities, and workshops, and classes, and groups… They spend countless hours honing their skills over the course of years, all to develop their unique voice. For the writer, voice is the holy grail. And it is the one thing that can never be replicated by a machine.

Because a machine doesn’t have a personality, or an attitude, or a worldview. It doesn’t hold personal beliefs or feel emotion.

So the person who seeks personal expression in writing, but allows AI to do that writing is only cheating his or herself for that voice will never develop and without that voice the words are nothing at all. “They are like a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

That person is also, if marketing and selling AI’s writing as his or her own, defrauding readers. Because it is a lie. It is a lie to claim authorship of something that one did not write, and it is a moral fraud to charge other people money for it on that deceptive basis.

The good news for readers is that ultimately those frauds won’t work. Because again, computer generated writing can have no voice. It may feel nice and pleasant, it may be correct, but it is always flat, and no one is going to knowingly buy writing that is flat. As more and more of it comes on the market, it will become easier to recognize it for what it is, hastening the failure of those who attempt to pawn it off on unsuspecting readers.

My sincere promise to you is that you’ll never read any of that garbage here. I publish under my own name. Every word is straight from my mind to yours. I make this promise to you, but also to myself for I have absolutely no desire to cheat myself out of my ability to think, nor effectively communicate.